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A few days ago, I posted a question about a passage from the book The Lady's Maid by Rosina Harrison. Since I'm translating it, there will be more questions to follow, so please bear with me!

Okay. So today I am proofreading this part, and I don't really understand what the bolded sentence implies. The author was waiting in the servants' hall to be introduced to her first employer as a young lady's maid. The relevant passage [bolding mine to identify keysentence] is:

I had time to reflect on things as I’d found them so far. The London I’d seen from the taxi was much what I had expected to find, the house if anything was smaller than I’d imagined, my bedroom, which I was to share with Miss Emms, was attractive and well furnished. I was not in the least daunted by my surroundings nor was I ever to be. Many people later expressed surprise at my easy acceptance of my new world but, as I told them, it takes a lot to impress a Yorkshire girl.

It was now that I didn’t seem to be able to find my tongue. I don’t know how long I sat there but it seemed like hours. When eventually I was taken upstairs and introduced to Lady Ierne I found her pleasant but stern. In turn I was introduced to Miss Patricia and Miss Ann and then handed over to Miss Emms, her ladyship’s personal maid, to be shown the schoolroom and to have my duties explained to me. Miss Emms began by giving me a sort of background history of the family and then went on to describe their country estates, Appleby Castle in Westmorland and Hothfield Place in Kent. I learnt that there were two sons, theHonourableHarry who was in the army, the Hussars, and Peter, a schoolboy at Eton; he was the youngest of the family and I was later to become very friendly with him.

I know that "unable to find my tongue" means speechless or not knowing what to say (and mind you, our author was very outspoken, judging from the rest of the book!), but WHY? I feel it has something to do with the rest of the paragraph because it is the first sentence in it, but I just can't figure out why. Is it because Lady Ierne was stern? But that seems to be a weak reason.

Am I missing anything here? Any thoughts?

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  • You know it means she couldn't speak up. They kept her waiting a long time, and she somehow didn't object. Commented 23 hours ago
  • You have three sentences in one, maybe from the original, but English doesn't allow it. Starting with "The London I’d seen from the taxi was much what I had expected to find. THE house, if anything, was smaller than I’d imagined. MY bedroom, which I was to share with Miss Emms, was attractive and well furnished." Commented 23 hours ago

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"Have you lost your tongue?" or, more facetiously, "Has the cat got your tongue?" is a traditional question to a child who is too shy, or too sullen, to answer when spoken to.

Rosina had not felt daunted by her arrival in a wealthy London house, but she did feel shy for the first time when left to wait a long time in the servants' hall.

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  • Yes; there's a contrastive ... suddenly, Rosina's nerves kick in. 'But suddenly I didn't seem ...' is perhaps clearer with the very common contrast indicator 'but' ... but the original, slightly more demanding, is stylistically far superior. Commented 16 hours ago

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